LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Temple Mount: Old City
built 615 days ago
The Temple Mount controversy took a new turn today when the legal advisor of the Jerusalem municipality issued an order to halt Waqf building activity on the Temple Mount. City officials ... intend to launch legal proceedings against all elements responsible for violating the zoning and construction laws in the area. Prime Minister Barak is hosting a "comprehensive deliberation" on the issue in his office today. Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert - who reportedly has some concrete proposals of how to handle the crisis - has also been invited to attend the meeting.
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Israel is in a difficult predicament concerning the Temple Mount. After it had conquered Jerusalem's Old City in 1967 and became sovereign over the Temple Mount, it decided not to change the 'Status Quo'. This consists of status about Israel's Holy Places dating from the Ottoman era. Later regimes have respected it, the English Mandate as well as Jordan, that ruled East-Jerusalem and the Old City until 1967.
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The Moslem Waqf's newly-opened illegal entrance on the Temple Mount is still up for discussion in Israeli government circles. Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami says that no forceful entry to the Temple Mount will be made to seal the new 12-meter entrance. I don't want to put on a show of force that will cause the entire city to burn - but there are other ways to ensure that the artifacts on the Mount are preserved, and that there will be effective archaeological supervision there - and I will recommend to the Prime Minister that we go all the way on this matter."
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Just south of the Temple Mount stood David?s City, the Jerusalem of David?s time. This section of Jerusalem was about ten acres in size, and was flanked by the Kidron Valley to the east and the Tyropean Valley to the west. Religious pilgrims visiting the Temple passed through David?s City before entering the southern entrances of the Temple Mount.
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The construction works on the Temple Mount continue, despite the orders issued by the Jerusalem municipality against them. Ten trucks have been seen taking earth and other remnants of the construction works to the Jerusalem city dump outside the village of Al-Azariyeh.
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In the years before that, after 1967 and Israel's annexation of the Old City, there were regular excavations by Israeli archaeologists in and around the Temple Mount. The aims were without exception scientific. For instance one looked for remains of the time of King Herod, and older periods, for example that of the Hasmonean kings (second and first century BCE).
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